


Whispers

by nic_writes



Series: I cannot say how many died, nor how long I suffered [2]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Jesse deserved better, Kix also deserved better, Rexsokas stay the fuck away or I'll break your kneecaps, but I didn't write this for him, kind of, so I wrote this
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-16
Updated: 2020-11-16
Packaged: 2021-03-10 00:22:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,585
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27594766
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nic_writes/pseuds/nic_writes
Summary: Set in the "I cannot tell how many died nor how long I suffered" universe. This will be a series of stories of other clones and their chips (I plan to have most of these clones show up in Fox's au, so I wrote their backstories).Chapter 1: Jesse
Relationships: CT-5597 | Jesse & Ahsoka Tano, CT-5597 | Jesse & CT-6116 | Kix, CT-5597 | Jesse & CT-7567 | Rex, CT-7567 | Rex & Ahsoka Tano
Series: I cannot say how many died, nor how long I suffered [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1897498
Comments: 8
Kudos: 23





	Whispers

**Author's Note:**

> It's Jesse :D. There's gonna be a lot of angst in this one, but hopefully some happiness too at the end.

It starts as a feeling of disconnect. How sometimes he’s doing something: working, cleaning his gun, fighting, and then for a few seconds he’ll feel frozen and gone. It isn’t just Jesse, most of his _vode_ seem to feel it at one point or another. The medics say it’s a trauma reaction and most of the worriers accept that and move on, learn to recognize the dissociation and work around it. But Jesse’s bothered by it for reasons he can’t explain.

“But what if I’m crazy, _vod_?” He asks slightly hysterically after a particularly disconnected day.

But Kix only laughs, takes a long drag out of his flask. “We’re ten year olds fighting in a war, it’d be a damn miracle if one of us wasn’t crazy.” But when he lowers his arm, he seems to clock Jesse’s worry and he says, softer, “It happens to everyone, Jess. I know it’s probably scary. But you’re fine. I promise.”

This Kix is optimistic and caring, dark humor but he can still laugh. The last time Jesse sees Kix, at the tail end of three years of near constant battle, he’s not the same man anymore. Neither of them are. How _can_ they be? They’ve been torn apart and scarred by war, their siblings dead. Kix has held thousands of dying soldiers, their bodies ripped open by artillery shells and blaster bolts, his gloves dripping red. Jesse’s entire batch has died; his squad has been torn apart. Psychological scars layering on each other and for both of them, physical scars and breaks and hurts too.

The last time he sees Kix is about a ten-day after Anaxes; they’re on leave on Coruscant and Kix has begun drinking more and more. At least that’s what Jesse assumes he’s doing when he sneaks out at nightfall and returns far too late, when he thinks Jesse and the others must be asleep. (Later, much later, Jesse will look back on these memories and realize with a wry twist to his mouth what Kix must have been doing, what he must have been searching for). Jesse tries to talk to him once or twice, worried, but Kix blows him off, says “Jess, I’m fine” in that measured voice of his that really says nothing.

And so Jesse leaves it, ignores the vast divide that has somehow formed between them. Perhaps it’s because of the pauldrons on his shoulders and the heavy kama around his hips, the new rank that Kix doesn’t tote alongside him. But Jesse knows that it’s because Kix has changed. Fives’ death devastated the entire company, but Kix especially. He’d seemed troubled and then one day he’d stopped shaving his hair, lost whatever remained of the easy cadence to his voice and his heart. (One day in the future, Jesse will reflect on these things and know that in the clear — too clear — lenses of hindsight what is happening to his brother.)

Then one day, Jesse wakes up to the shrill klaxon that rouses the _vode_ at 0500 standard, turns over in his bed blinking the sleep out of his eyes. To find an empty bunk next to him, covers strewn messily. And no Kix.

Perhaps it’s cliché to say that he never saw Kix again. But that’s what happened. Kix just never returned.

In the records, it’s a desertion. Jesse knows that it’s not. Rex does too, and so do all the soldiers who knew Kix, they know that he would never run and abandon his siblings. But to be honest, General Skywalker is pre-occupied with whatever the fuck he’s doing in the Senate. And no natborn higher-up would ever listen to a clone.

And so they march on, the 501st, broken and hurting but there can be no rests in such a brutal war. And with Mandalore rapidly approaching, the acute pain that is Kix’s disappearance slowly fades into a dull throb, just another layer upon all the losses he’s known. By the time they land in Sundari, Jesse’s overwhelmed by the rush of adrenaline and brutal clarity of battle, everything that he’s ever known.

Here as he ducks and rolls under blaster bolts, some which singe his pauldrons and paint, one misstep certain death and his heart beating out a kata in his ears, there is no room for any of the worry and the endless thoughts that would normally circle through his mind. Not Kix, not Echo, not even the disconnect that has been plaguing him more and more recently now.

\---------------------------

Maul rips open his shields and tears into his mind like a blaster bolt through flesh. Jesse clenches his teeth, trying to hold his screams in because the Zabrak’s mind is like a hot brand, seething and writhing and full of hate and pain that seeps through his shields and into the tender edges of Jesse’s tortured consciousness. For a few desperate minutes he fights against the presence but it sweeps aside his feeble mental efforts.

“Tell me,” Maul hisses, the voice echoing painfully in Jesse’s mind. “Who is this Ahsoka Tano?”

Jesse writhes and twists, yelping until finally screams tear out of his throat and then his eyes roll back into his head. Then he screams his vocal chords raw while Maul tears his mind open and rips through his memories.

_No. Stop. That’s mine. STOP._

_STOP._

\---------------------------

Why did Maul leave him alive? Jesse doesn’t understand. Maul has torn him open and taken everything he wanted and everything he needed. Why didn’t Maul just kill him? Jesse’s kneeling, all broken and curved, next to the throne. What a beautiful, vicious picture Maul has planned.

Jesse didn’t even last a few minutes. ARC training had prepped him for torture of the physical kind, taught him how to shut himself off in a little box away from everything that was happening around him and to his body. But nothing could have ever prepared him for the painful way that Maul had simply forced his way into his mind. He just broke.

That’s the most painful part of it. Jesse has failed, simple as that.

He’s an ARC trooper, he’s a clone trooper, he was raised loyal to the Republic and swore that he would never betray it, even to his dying breath. The Republic cog is tattooed across his face for fuck’s sake. And here he is, having let everything go. He’s put Commander Tano in danger. Maybe he’s fucked up the entire mission. He betrayed the Republic.

But it’s all really a lie that he’s been told, some part of him thinks. Sometimes when the blood gets to be too much or Kix is crying again about how he wasn’t able to save his _vode_ , Jesse has thought that maybe it was all spacer tales. They’re cannon fodder, he knows it. He swore grand oaths, shining castles built in his mind's eye because it was what he had been told to think. But everything that he was raised on was a lie, it had to be because how else could you justify teaching four year olds how to snap a man’s neck? _Kark the Republic_ , he thinks viciously.

For a few seconds, he toys around with the phrase, savoring it, savoring the rebel in it, the justified anger. He’s heard it whispered around before, but this is the first time he’s ever dared to think it.

Drift’s face floats in his mind, blood trickling out of his mouth once Jesse had pried his helmet off. He didn’t bother calling Kix over; he knew they were going to die. There’s a certain feeling or a type of smell that leaves a few minutes before someone dies; you get really good at telling after holding hundreds of dying people. Drift had a gold tattoo covering half of their face, but their face was undeniably identical to Jesse’s, eerily so (when you grow up surrounded by identical clones, you also get really good at telling your siblings apart by tiny tells or differences, but Drift had looked so much like Jesse that at first he’d been unsettled). They died for the Republic, young and raised and fattened on lies.

It’s ironic, because to Jesse that’s the face of the Republic. A young clone. Not a civie, not even the Chancellor. Just a shiny. He doesn’t fool himself with tales about how he fights for the people. The delusions of grandeur and honor didn’t last long under fire so thick that it scorched ridges through his pauldrons. But when he cries over the people who he’s lost, he knows that he fights for them, for his family. That’s the only tenet of the _resol’nare_ that Jango and the _Cuy’val Dar_ didn’t butcher: unquestioning loyalty. To him, the Republic is really his sibling clones, and maybe Commander Tano, maybe General Skywalker, his family. These are the people who suffer when he fails. This is the Republic to him.

All people who he would die for.

Kark the Republic?

These are the people who he betrayed (and Kix, a voice in his mind whispers. Kix, who you abandoned. It wouldn’t be the first time you’ve betrayed someone would it?). Guilt tastes bitter in his mouth, along with the blood that he spat out.

He makes a thousand silent promises to himself, to Ahsoka and to Rex and to his vode. _Please. I promise I will protect you. I’m sorry._ He makes a silent oath to Kix, propelled by the guilt. _I will find you, brother. I’m sorry for leaving you._

_I promise I will protect you. I’m so sorry I didn’t. I will never betray you again._

Leather rasps against rock as Maul shifts on the throne; Jesse glances up at him. When Maul glances down at him, lazily, carelessly, as if Jesse were nothing but a droid, Jesse hates himself for flinching down.

Softer, he pleads:

_Please come for me. Don’t abandon me._

If they leave him, Maul will kill him.

\---------------------------

But of course they don’t. Because that isn’t who they are, they care too much. Bleeding hearts.

Kryze, Commander Tano and Captain Rex. Most of it blurs over in relief and exhaustion, but he’s aware of his shaky knees as he stumbles across the room, maybe he says something, he isn’t quite aware, and then Rex’s hand on his back and a firm feeling of safety. His vision blurs with tears. _Thank you._ Rex is leading him somewhere, then he stops and tries to sit Jesse down on a bed.

“No.” Jesse’s voice comes out hoarse from all the screaming; he feels a point of shame for sounding so broken.

Rex frowns. “Jesse, I need to check you over.”

“I’m fine. He didn’t hurt me.”

“Forgive me for being suspicious but that doesn’t sound like Maul.”

“He-” Jesse’s voice breaks for a second. “It’s nothing that you can fix.”

Rex freezes. His voice sounds, if anything, more worried, nearing frantic now. “Jess?”

“No- no, he just-” unable to articulate the words, Jesse waves two fingers around over his forehead.

“Oh. _Oh._ ” There’s so much worry in Rex’s eyes that Jesse almost cries in relief, surrounded by so much care. He leans into Rex’s arm which is wrapped around his shoulders now, closes his eyes and tries to dull the headache forming between his eyes and hide himself away from reality. “Okay, okay,” Rex repeats. “Um, nothing else?”

“No.” Jesse’s lying, he’d gotten knocked out and there’s protocol about head injuries, but he doesn’t really want to be prodded right now. He just wishes that he could have a few minutes when the galaxy could pause, just to be hugged by Rex or by another one of his siblings. He misses Kix and Tup and Fives and Hardcase- tears pop into his eyes.

“Well, maybe Commander Tano can check over you later.” Rex sits down slowly and Jesse’s knees buckle down as well. The bed is softer than the GAR-issued cots; Sundari’s a wealthy, lavish city. He shifts so that his face fits in the cusp between Rex’s pauldron and his neck and there in the little bit of darkness and safety that it offers, he lets himself cry. Out of relief, out of joy, out of fear, he doesn’t know. Maybe all of them. Rex’s hand lands between his shoulder blades and holds him gently.

All the _vode_ have cried too many times, washed out the residual shame that comes with tears, but Jesse has always tried to hold himself together and stay strong for his siblings. This time, he just can’t. Tears run down his face and soak cold into the neck of his blacks and probably Rex’s too. He can’t particularly find it in himself to care. After a few minutes, he mumbles, “M’sorry.”

“It’s okay,” Rex says soothingly. Jesse lets himself cry a little bit more at that.

“I betrayed you, he wanted to know about Commander Tano. I gave him everything, I failed.” Jesse finds himself rambling about how it felt when Maul tore apart his mind, how scared he had been no matter how hard he’d tried to hold it together. “I betrayed you,” he finishes, his voice going hoarse again. “I’m sorry. _Ni ceta_.”

“You tried, Jesse. You tried.”

“I won’t betray you again. Ever again. You or Commander Tano. Never.”

Rex inhales, as if to say something, but he’s cut off by the rapid blinking of his comm and then a voice punctuated by the rhythmic explosions and screams of war frantically shouts, “Captain! Death Watch, they’re attacking! We need reinforcements!”

“Copy that, I’m on my way,” Rex replies. Then softer, to Jesse: “I gotta go.”

“Yeah,” he mumbles softly.

Rex gently slips away, grabs his helmet and walks out. He turns at the door. “I believe you, Jesse.”

“What?”

“I trust you, I trust you would never betray me.” Tears blur out Rex’s figure and then the door slides shut.

\---------------------------

The wind whips around the hangar and the ship shudders, sinking lower and lower through. Jesse wishes that he had wiped away his tears then, had seen Rex clearly one last time, said something. Because this time it isn’t him who’s seeing Rex - _traitor_ , a voice snarls, the same voice that is coming out of his mouth and moving his body. Holding his blasters neatly at shoulder level, reading out a list of crimes that the Republic - the _Republic?_ The karking Republic - charges him with the execution statement.

Rex says something and Jesse wants to break down, curl away and cry. Or scream. CT-5597 ignores him. Some part of his mind that is not his, that is foreign and that has taken over and- the chips. The _shabla_ chips. Fives was right. His entire body feels weighed down. Fives was right. Right and ignored. Then suddenly some part of the puzzle fits together, pieces sliding into place. Tup. Kix. What Kix must have known, he’d come back disturbed and told Jesse the entire thing, but Jesse (so blind and stupid), Jesse had told him it must be wrong. Kix must have known, Kix must have found out.

Died for it, most likely. Dead and gone.

How isn’t Rex struggling through the same? He must have beaten it somehow, must have won against his chip. Jesse surges forward, grapples with the chip for a few seconds. There’s a transparisteel barrier between him and the controls of his mind; as he pounds on it, he can feel 5597 pause in confusion and for a brief moment it’s as if he’s in control again. Then the wall slams shut and 5597 raises his blasters again.

“Commander Rex, you’re in violation of Order 66. I accuse you of treason against the Grand Army of the Republic.” _No, no, no._ “You’ll be demoted in rank from Commander and subject to execution, along with the traitor Ahsoka Tano.”

Stop, he screams. Silently. _STOP._

“Company.” The other clones raise their blasters and settle into firing stance in unison, eerily, unnaturally in sync. “Ready, aim-”

He’s falling, slams his head hard against the floor or wherever the kark he lands and blacks out, the taste of blood in his mouth.

\---------------------------

The moon is relatively uninhabited, one of the thousands or millions in the galaxy, most unnamed. There are a few researchers who etch out a living and a little bit of science on the fragile ecosystem. They hear the thunder of an atmo breach before they see the ship, smoking and badly damaged and falling apart. Some of the more keen-eyed swear that they see a much smaller ship, twisting away. But they don’t stick around to watch as the Destroyer makes contact with the moon.

\---------------------------

When it does, it’s with an impact that’s felt all over the moon and a thunderous explosion.

\---------------------------

Ahsoka’s the one who finds him. She’s lifting up debris with the Force, one hand on her lightsaber because she doesn’t know if she’ll be attacked. Rex is on the other side of the Star Destroyer, pulling out bodies from where the barracks had been when he hears her call his name.

“ _Kih’vod? Me’bana?_ ” He asks, dropping the piece of transparisteel he’d been struggling with and walking over. They’d decided to stick to _mando’a_ for now, in case there are sentients eavesdropping. She makes an indistinguishable choking noise. Horror roils up in him when he sees what she’s looking at.

Jesse is pinned under a durasteel plate, his helmet cracked and blood thick over his shoulder plates. Rex can’t tell if it's his or someone else’s. Is it selfish to hope that it was another _vod’s_? Beside him, Ahsoka’s breathing hitches and then she flicks her wrist and the plate is thrown across the wreckage. Before he can stop her, she takes a few steps forward.

“ _Kaysh oyayc_.” He’s alive.

Rex swallows hard. “ _Tion gar veman’kartayl?_ ”

“I’m sure, Rex. I can feel it.” Her voice is cracking. He decides to drop the _mando’a._

“Is he the only one?”

She looks away, her montrals twitching with grief. “Yes.”

\---------------------------

They have to leave the wreckage behind for now, Jesse’s badly injured and they don’t have time to bury the rest of the _vode._ Rex picks him up gently. There’s a medpac on the Y-Wing, but it’s only enough to keep him stable for a few hours, maybe a day, so they debate back and forth as the bacta pumps into Jesse’s body over where to go. Ahsoka wants to find a neutral planet, maybe Alderaan. Rex puts his foot down on that, they don’t know where is safe no matter how much she trusts Bail, and he’d rather not take any chances.

In the end, they find the nearest populated planet and Ahsoka steals the supplies they need. They only go back to the wreckage once Jesse’s stable, only to find it buzzing with probe droids and unnaturally rigid clones. Ahsoka presses a hand to her mouth to muffle a sob. Beside her, Rex freezes, his mind seething.

They leave and never come back. Ahsoka whispers a silent apology to the _vode_ who they abandoned, who they left out to rot. But at least there’s one who they were able to save. She glances back over at Jesse, whose eyes remain closed and whose vitals are beeping steadily. The chip is still in him and she doesn’t know what’s going on. Rex tells her that it’ll be okay, but he doesn’t know what’s going on either.

But she makes a silent promise to him, a promise that she will not give up on him. She will not fail to protect him. He will be okay.

\---------------------------

The first time Jesse opens his eyes again, he’s instantly doubled over in pain, screaming and muttering “Good soldiers follow orders.” Rex thinks that that phrase will haunt him forever. Ahsoka puts him back under.

The second time he wakes up, he’s silent, not brooding, just mechanically silent. That’s even eerier. Then after a few hours, he slips back into unconsciousness.

The med droid doesn’t deem him stable enough to operate on for weeks. It’s weeks of torture for all three of them, Jesse wrestling with the chip in his mind and Rex and Ahsoka crying together or sometimes curled up apart. For him and for each other.

The first time Jesse can finally see and move in his own mind, he cries too, then refuses to talk to them, hides away.

There will be many days of tears and holding each other and sobbing in a group pile. There will be days of sullen anger and lashing out too, sometimes breaking things or breaking their knuckles on things. They’re traumatized, all three of them, and they don’t really know how to deal with it. But they’re alive. Rex keeps his mind fully focused on moving, avoiding the Empire, and causing trouble. Jesse takes to the third with a vicious glee. He can’t really be blamed for it. And Ahsoka aids and abets them, does her best to keep them safe and to save who she can, Jedi and clones and civilians. She feels she’s atoning for her failures. They all are.

At least they’re together. At least they’re alive, to live and breathe another day, to fight another day.

They swear that they will never leave each other, they will never hurt each other again. Jesse’s afraid to make that oath but when he does, he swears it with a vicious, maniacal sort of gleam in his eye. One day, they will make the Empire hurt for what it did.

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed! Jesse will show up later in "Under his Everlasting Reign."
> 
> Come chat with me or send asks @a-dumb-writing-gay on Tumblr :D
> 
> Mando'a translations (all lifted from here: mandoa.org. The phrases are mostly cobbled together based on what I know about Mando'a grammar so don't take it at face value):  
> vod/vode - sibling, gender neutral (vode is plural)  
> resol'nare - six tenets of Mandalorian culture. You have to follow these six rules every day in order to be considered a Mandalorian, otherwise you will be dar'manda (wear armor, speak Mando'a, protect your family, provide for your clan, serve your mand'alor, teach your children the Mandalorian ways)  
> Cuy'val Dar - the 75 Mandalorians that Jango Fett called to Kamino to train the clone army. They were required to just up and leave their families and play dead without letting anyone know about their true whereabouts. Considered by Jango to be the best in their crafts.  
> shabla - fucking  
> Kih'vod? Me'bana - Little sister (in this context)? What's up/What's happening?  
> mando'a - the language, hahah  
> Kaysh oyayc - He's alive (kaysh is genderneutral, but he in this context)  
> Tion gar veman'kartayl - Are you sure


End file.
